Well that certainly is a shock, choosing Bopara on the back of just one appearance instead of Mal Loye, the rest of the squad is as expected. Similarly with Australia - taking Shaun Tait over Stuart Clark has weakened their squad I feel and Gilchrist is going to miss the first 2/3 games to be with his wife who is expecting a child. Also cannot understand why NZ have picked Daryl Tuffey who hasn't played an international for about a hundred years (since a scandal on the last tour to England involving a couple of girls and a video camera ) and his recent domestic figures have been pretty awful.

My 1st choice England 11 from this squad then:Vaughan (capt), Joyce, Pietersen, Collingwood, Bell, Flintoff, Dalrymple, Plunkett, Nixon, Panesar, Anderson (if Anderson not fit in time, then Mahmood)Idealy the keeper would be James Foster who is vastly superior to all 3 keepers we have seen on the Australia tour, at both keeping and batting, but his face doesn't seem to fit, so Nixon (the worst of the 3 in both aspects) it is.

Not a fan of Ian Bell, but he can't be dropped on form, but must go down the order as he's much more useful in the 25-40 over spell where he can pick up singles. At 3 he will always be in during the power play and he's not the person to take advantage of it. Pietersen must be 3 for me, to take advantage of the power plays and to make sure we begin to build competitive totals. I'd even be tempted to open with him in the One Day game, and perhaps against Canada it wouldn't be such a bad thing to trial.

Go Scotland. An easy first game at least. I think Bell's good . I'd open with Flintoff. Loye's probalby as good as vaughan but slightly eccentric. Still in odis the strike rate is the important thing. so 30 out of 30 say for loye is okay. Strauss is an embarrassment and will i hope be dropped. To be quite honest they'd be better bringing back Knight. He was england's best. Collingwood's been great. You were right Alex.. But if i dare say it Alex, his overall form in the summer wasn't great. Apart from two great innings durings the tests he had 8 bad ones. That ain't great. But he batted superbly during the last 3 games. Although by his own admission he needed to. his bowling is very good and should have been used in the tests, glad to see australian commentators agreeing with me on this.

At some point Alex, you'll have to explain the power play to me. I don't have my friend Pete here to explain that to me

Basically, you know the fielding restrictions? They are only allowed 2 fielders outside the 30m circle in the first 10 overs. This is too encourage batsmen to hit over the top and be attacking etc. Well It used to be 15 overs, but a couple of years ago the ICC changed it to 10 overs and brought in the "power play" which is a further 2 sets of 5 overs with the fielding restrictions in place, and the fielding captain can choose when to use them - 99% of the time it's just straight after the first 10 overs, so effectively it's been changed from 15 overs of fielding restrictions as it used to be, to 20 overs. Pretty pointless, I fail to see what it adds to the game. It was supposed to make the game more exciting and was introduced along with the sub which we saw for about a year which you may remember, but that was such a failure it was dumped.

Open with Flintoff Iain? No way, he only knows one way, and that way is basically to slog. He has to be the one to come in and rapidly increase the total in the last 10 overs. As for Collingwood, yes he lost a bit of form after the double century, but his class came through in the end. 2 great innings in the tests (3 if you include the battling 40 odd in the 2nd Adelaide innings when everyone was skittled out for nothing) were not enough, although I'm struggling to think of anyone else other than Pietersen who had as many as 2 good ones. Strauss had 9 bad ones (I think he did get 50 once so 1 reasonable innings) and he had 1 50 in the one dayers and 9 bad innings. Although to be fair he was screwed by the umpires in about half of those. And yes, no idea why Collingwood was handed the ball a couple of times during the tests.

Basically, you know the fielding restrictions? They are only allowed 2 fielders outside the 30m circle in the first 10 overs. This is too encourage batsmen to hit over the top and be attacking etc. Well It used to be 15 overs, but a couple of years ago the ICC changed it to 10 overs and brought in the "power play" which is a further 2 sets of 5 overs with the fielding restrictions in place, and the fielding captain can choose when to use them - 99% of the time it's just straight after the first 10 overs, so effectively it's been changed from 15 overs of fielding restrictions as it used to be, to 20 overs. Pretty pointless, I fail to see what it adds to the game. It was supposed to make the game more exciting and was introduced along with the sub which we saw for about a year which you may remember, but that was such a failure it was dumped.

I knew there were fielding restrictions but didn't know how it all worked - thanks for the explanation. I don't know about any of the other stuff - I'm pretty new to this cricketing mularky!

I should have mentioned that the power plays must be used. The fielding captain can't just use the first 10 overs of fielding restrictions then not use the rest, they have to be used. Hence, they are in most cases just used straight away to make 20 overs of restrictions. Only times they are not used straight away are when the batting team has scored a million runs off the first 10. The fielding captain might not use them and have a more defensive field to slow the run rate, then bring them in later to get them out of the way.

Do you not know about the Sub? That came in at the same time as Power Play. Basically your 12th man was instead a "Sub" who could be swapped for someone else part way through the match and could then bat and bowl (ie, take full part in the game). Downside was that you had to name the sub before the toss, which meant the side who won the toss got all the benefit from it as they could, for example bowl first, then sub out their number 11 for the sub who is a batsman for their batting innings. It was in play in the one day series before the 2005 Ashes. We used it with Simon Jones, and usually Vikram Solanki. If we bowled first, we'd bowl out Jones' 10 overs at the start, then sub him off and bring on Solanki, the better fielder and a batsman. I remember in one match against Australia we batted first and were getting skittled out (how things change ), so we subbed off Giles before he'd batted and brought in Solanki, who then batted and scored 50 and helped us to a better total. Despite being in the side, Giles didn't actually take part in the game. Personally, I didn't like the idea of the sub. It too heavily favoured the side who won the toss. And anyway, if you take 9 wickets, it's all part of the game that Glenn McGrath or Jimmy Anderson then has to bat isn't it? The sub idea was abolished after a short trial, but the Power Plays were kept on. Don't really see the point of them either. If the ICC want to attract more fans to cricket, then they should organise more 20/20 matches IMO, not change a few rules of the One Day game. And that is what they are moving towards, with a 20/20 World Cup coming up after the regular World Cup.

Very well explained there Alex I only really got interested in cricket with the Ashes in 2005. Of course I knew of Beefys Ashes heroics, and I knew of other cricket players, but hadn't really followed it before.

So will we be having a fantasy world cup league? There was mention of one in a couple of weeks on the site we've been using.

Australia have just crashed to their 4th defeat in 5 matches and 3rd in a row. A 10 wicket loss to New Zealand in Wellington today Skittled out for 148 batting first, Vincent and Fleming then cruised the Black Craps to an easy victory. And Brett Lee is only rated a "50-50 chance" for the World Cup to add to a bit of misery.Matches in NZ are terrible. Toss pretty much decides the match. Whoever bowls first wins as the pitches are appalling. Eden Park is the worst, tests are always over in 3 days there, so could be another low scoring match on Sunday.

Amazing game today. Australia smashed 336-4, Hussey making 105 and Hodge again getting stuck agonisingly close to his first 100. 97 not out this time. Needed 4 with 2 balls to go and only managed a single, putting White on strike for the last ball.Eden Park is usually a bowler's pitch. Tests are always over in 3 days. Of all the matches I've been to there I don't think I've ever seen a big score, probably about 230-240 being the highest, and even a 20-20 I went to there was low scoring. Trust only the 2nd ever 300 scored there to be when I don't go. Dad and Brother went with a couple of free tickets my Dad got from work.

And amazingly NZ chased it down, and won with 8 balls to spare Ross Taylor smashing a century, and Craig McMillan slogging 50 odd off 30 late onPoor captaincy from Hussey at the end IMO. Once it got down to a run a ball needed, he still kept the field back and allowed easy singles where he might have been better off setting a more aggressive field to try and get the wickets.So it's 4 losses in a row and 5 in the last 6 for Australia with now only 1 game left before the World Cup. They have now lost 2 consecutive One Day series. And they have also lost the top spot in the rankings with this defeat. Apparently South Africa now overtake them as number 1 in ODIs. Not the best time to get out of form, and could it possibly be that the World Cup might not in fact be the complete one horse race expected up until just a couple of weeks ago?